Burrowing in for the Long Winter I (Stages of Solitude)

We can begin to sketch out this path by considering the following quotes:

https://deepmeditationtherapy.blogspot.com

the door to the teenage bedroom is always closed as it is the first space we learn to expand into. within those limits we extend consciousness beyond the skull walls. it is a training programme.

http://www.bretschneider.xyz/the-death-of-maryanne-amacher

Until recently one could take a unique solace, that alone on a hill in upstate New York a mad thinker was hard at work manufacturing sounds never heard before, and wild futuristic theories previously unthunk. One didn’t need to know what exactly the sonic research was, how the madness manifested specifically, or the current state of the musical art; all one needed to know was that the visceral imagination would go on plodding sans distraction, and that some sort of abstract formulation of auditory utopia was in the making.

To my mind, these passages are closely related.

First--both reference the same kind of activity--a kind that's very difficult to describe straightforwardly due to how abstract it is. For now, I'll refer to it as exploratory progress: a process of learning and creating without a textbook or manual to guide you, a process entailing regular and fruitful expeditions into the unknown. (For our purposes, this concept centers around the creation of art and music, but perhaps it could extend to other subjects as well.)

Second--both cases involve a withdrawal from the outside world. There’s no literal exploration of terrain involved, as it's all from within the safe confines of home. There's no meeting new people, either.

The difference between the quotes above is conveyed in the phrase "training programme". The activity described in the latter is the grownup version of that described in the former. No longer the teenage bedroom, but, in Scheider's words, the hill in upstate New York. The master’s study. The eccentric relative's attic. Dumbledore's office, with its inscrutable instruments and old portraits.

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I won't go into much detail about the idea of the teenage bedroom--after all, it's Luka's term, not mine--but for me the basic notion is as follows.

It’s a matter of discovering a new way to spend time, and then making this new way of spending time a habit. It turns out that you don’t have to spend every minute either hanging out with friends, passively consuming media, working, or studying for a test. This is the stage where you discover that there’s another option, which is “exploratory progress”.

Most likely, you will not be particularly focused or ambitious at this stage. Since you aren't attached to any prior expectations (internal or external), there isn't yet any pressure to be those things. You don't have to be Descartes, systematically constructing his pyramid of knowledge from the ground up. It's unlikely that you will accomplish any specific goals of lasting significance.

In the case of music, the teenage bedroom stage could entail making a lot of music, but it also could entail simply listening to music and thinking about it. Consider Juan Atkins’ recollection of how the Belleville three listened to music in their teenage years: “we used to sit back and philosophize . . . half the shit we thought about the artist never even fucking thought about!” Even if they weren't practicing their craft in the most literal sense, they were learning and being creative. So you can make exploratory progress without (yet) producing anything tangible.

As a stage of development, the teenage bedroom is less analogous to making progress along the path, more to gradually figuring out that the path exists.

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We can already get some sense of how the master’s study is different. It is everything the teenage bedroom couldn’t be: focused, ambitious, learned. At this point the foundations / path are firmly established (though perhaps still subject to scrutiny and modification). The task is making progress on top of them.

Solitude figures into each stage, but for differing reasons. The teenage bedroom is a place of solitude because you can only discover the new way of spending time it offers if you’re alone (or with a very small group of friends). The master’s study is also a place of solitude, but for a different reason: no one else could make the same kind of progress. They don’t have the same arcane, specialized knowledge, and you’ve already progressed far enough that it’s clear that the vision beckoning you is unique.

You don’t have to stop thinking, but at this point thoughts aren’t enough. You need to produce concrete evidence that you’ve been doing more with your time than, you know, endlessly rewatching Sniper Special Ops or something. You need to make your progress real so that it won’t all die with you. And if that’s the goal, wouldn’t you want to realize it to the fullest, least compromised extent that you can manage?

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With two stages of our path identified, we might now ask how one graduates from the first to the second. In order to answer this, I think that an additional stage must be introduced.

Burrowing in for the Long Winter (Introduction)

With a new decade beginning, it's natural to speculate about the future of music. What exciting developments are around the corner? More worryingly, are there exciting developments around the corner?

On Dissensus, the latter question inevitably transforms into another one: will there be a new music-based youth subculture? The assumption, of course, is that these questions are essentially the same. Fresh, exciting music is the domain of The Kids. If we want new and mindblowing sounds, we look to them and no one else.

In this series of posts, I won't explicitly argue against the above claim. (It's very compatible with the history of pop music, after all.) But I will try to offer an alternative perspective that I find vastly preferable to that one.

I'll do this by outlining what I see as the archetypal stages of an artist's development. This progression isn't necessarily appealing to everyone--let alone viable for everyone in a practical / material sense. But I think it's the path that results in the greatest possible body of work from the artist, and for that reason I see it as aspirational.

Why is this envisioned path incompatible with the youth subculture-centered view above? Because it suggests that exciting new music doesn't in fact belong to the kids. At least, not entirely. It suggests that the moment in which an artist is enmeshed in a larger cultural movement isn't the only stage at which their work can surprise and matter. In fact, it's what you do after that initial moment has faded that can have the most value.

second phase

the farlands post has reached an astounding 62 views!!! i think in 2020 that puts me in the top 1% of all blogs in terms of active readership.

 c'mon when's the next post coming??? we're dying to know!

time to clean this place up. i've unpublished several of the more embarrassing old posts and will hopefully be adding a few new ones over the next week or so. i'd like to be able to say that i've grown tremendously as a writer over the past two years, and that the coming posts will blow the old ones out of the water in originality, clarity, depth, and style--but that would be a total lie. but since, as of one week ago, i'm officially a NEET,  there's no reason to half-ass these next few posts. as a wise old man once said, "we always look for doctors but sometimes we're lucky to find a frosh".